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Orcas will be designed to take advantage of Longhorn features, including Avalon, the new presentation subsystem; "Indigo," a programming model for building Web services; and the new declarative programming model known as XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language), which is the underlying technology for an upcoming tool code-named Sparkle that will automate Avalon development.
"The big challenge for Orcas is to expose the power of Avalon without burdening Microsoft customers with another massive learning curve," said Mike Sax, president of Sax Software Corp., of Eugene, Ore. "Microsoft is innovating faster than its installed base can keep up with, so its all about making things easy and familiar for developers."

Scott Guthrie, product unit manager of the ASP.Net and Visual Studio Web Tool teams at Microsoft, said, "From a programming model perspective with Orcas, we are looking to take XHTML and CSS [Cascading Stylesheets] even further. We are looking at how designers work with developers."
Asked what Orcas is about, Goodhew said it will involve enabling the Longhorn wave, improving the Web developer experience, and extending tools for the software development lifecycle.
Darren Laybourn, general manager of the Microsoft Business Framework, said, "Well be part of Orcas."

"From a Visual Studio point of view were filling a hole that has existed in terms of if you look at many of the applications built by ISVs, they use the Microsoft technology but they also build a platform layer in addition to that," Laybourn said. "And MBF is trying to fill that need."
Additional reporting by Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Watch.Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis in programming environments and developer tools.

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.